on forgiveness

"I don't care what you say! They hurt me, and I will never never forgive them!"  Those words, coming from the mouth of a 17-year-old Christian girl, shocked me.  I was teaching a course on Biblical concepts, and this was just a review of the Lord's prayer.  "…and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us".  The lesson taught that forgiveness isn't for the other person--forgiveness is for you.

Refusing to forgive is toxic.  We all know this, don't we?  Yet we grasp our hurt and anger to our hearts with eagle talons, refusing to even consider opening our hands and letting go of them through forgiveness.  "Why should I?" we ask. We don't want to be the weak one.  We don't want them to get away with it.  It seems to us that the horrible thing that was done to us will be compounded if we forgive the person that did it.  Added to that is the idea that we would have to actually go to our offender, not to confront but to forgive?  Unthinkable!

Forgiveness is hard.  It goes against everything we have come to accept as true.  We are a society that loves getting even, and we can't imagine giving up our hurt to the very person that hurt us.  But if you're thinking in that way, there is a major truth about forgiveness that you're not getting.

Forgiveness isn't for them.  It's for you.

The person that has hurt you has great power over you unless you choose to forgive them.  The evil that they did to you, the sin they visited upon you, is festering within.  Your eagle talons are poison tipped, and the more tightly you hold on to your hurt, the more poison you take into yourself.  Forgiveness is a means of turning the back into hands that are capable of loving acceptance.  When you forgive, you allow the hands to open and the hurt and pain and poison to go away, back to the pit from whence they came.

Some people say that you need to confront your persecutor and say that you forgive them.  In fact, the peace is done in Catholic and other liturgical churches for precisely this reason.  (I believe that all churches should pass the sign of peace).  It enables the parishioner to seek out the person that he has wronged or the person that has wronged him and ask for or give pardon.  It normally happens before communion so that you can partake with a clean conscience.

I am not sure that I agree with these people in all cases.  For one thing, the obvious fact is that some people are no longer around to forgive.  They have moved or died or you have lost touch.  For another, there are some people whose souls are so dark that they will take your forgiveness as another excuse to wound you even more.  Such people should be left alone until that time that you are strong enough in yourself and in the Lord to meet with them.

Forgiveness can be accomplished simply by speaking to these people with God as your witness.  I have forgiven countless people in this way.  If it's not enough, God will definitely let you know.  But for the majority (especially those lost to us through time or place), this will allow the bitterness to dissipate and the healing to begin.

As for those few that God tells you  must be confronted, be alert.  There's a reason.  There was one person in particular that changed my life when I forgave them.  This person did me a wrong that had been with me for many years, and when I confronted, I was told that the person had regretted it their whole life. They had done it to me because it had been done to them, and it had been the biggest mistake that the person had ever made.  "I'm so sorry that I destroyed your life," I was told.  We finished the conversation, I hung up the phone, and then it dawned on me.  Nobody can destroy my life but me!  I  can choose to let what happened make me weak or make me strong.  I choose to let it make me strong!

I learned so much through that conversation.  First, I realized that the person needed my forgiveness as much as I needed to give it.  Secondly, the person was passing on a wrong that had been done.  Thirdly, the thought of an action controlling one's life had been in both our minds, and we both needed to get past it.  I hadn't realized that, and once I did, I felt chains slipping off.  The forgiveness, which had happened long before the conversation, changed somehow.  Instead of forgiving an action that still existed, it was as if the forgiving "face to face" erased the actions themselves.  I can truly say that I no longer feel bound by them, and I pray that the other person has achieved some of the same feeling, as well.

So if you feel that there are certain things in your life that you can't forgive--a parent's unfaithfulness that led to divorce, a rebuff from friends, a time of abuse or molestation--please try--just try--forgiveness.  What do you have to lose?